An NPR fundraising executive said her organization would be willing to shield a would-be donor from a government audit by keeping the donor’s name anonymous, according to a series of surreptitiously recorded phone calls released on Thursday by a conservative activist.

Betsy Liley, NPR’s senior director of institutional giving, made the comments to a man posing as a trustee of a fictitious Muslim charity, which the man had said had connections to the Muslim Brotherhood, an Egypt-based group that has suspected ties to terrorists.

Liley’s conversations with the man were captured as part of a sting operation orchestrated by James O’Keefe, who has targeted the ACORN community group and Planned Parenthood with secret recordings.

O’Keefe secretly videotaped Liley’s boss, Ron Schiller, making demeaning comments about conservatives during a luncheon meeting set up to discuss what the NPR managers believed was a potential $5 million contribution. Liley was also at that meeting and briefly comments in the video.

Ron Schiller resigned from NPR on Tuesday for his role in the video scandal. The video’s release also led to the resignation on Wednesday of his boss, NPR chief executive Vivian Schiller.

In a lengthy follow-up phone call with Liley after the lunch, an O’Keefe associate posing as “Ibrahim Kasaam ” of the Muslim Education Action Center (a fictitious entity) expressed concerns that NPR, which receives government funding, would be subject to government audits or would have to disclose the source of its donations.

Liley responded, “If you were concerned about that, you might want to be an anonymous donor and we would certainly, if that was your interest, we would want to shield you from that.”

At another point, Kasaam asked Liley, “It sounded like you’re saying that NPR would be able to shield us from a government audit, is that correct?”

“I think that is the case, especially if you were anonymous, and I can inquire about that,” Liley said. She later informed Kasaam via e-mail that NPR’s management had cleared an anonymous donation from his group.

NPR had previously said, in the wake of the luncheon video, that it had “repeatedly refused” to accept donations from the organization.

In the video, Schiller is seen at a luncheon meeting in Georgetown with prospective NPR donors who claim to represent a pro-shariah group called the Muslim Education Action Center. The prospective donors, who say they have $5 million to disburse, are actually grass-roots activists O’Keefe trained.

The videotape shows Schiller telling his prospects that the the grass-roots conservative tea party organizations have “hijacked” the Republican party. He states that the new GOP elements are “not just Islamaphobic, but really xenophobic, I mean basically they are, they believe in sort of white, middle-America gun-toting — I mean, it’s scary. They’re seriously racist, racist people.”

Schiller’s potential patrons state outright on their faux Web site that they support the spread of extremist shariah law. They also are heard telling Schiller that their organization has connections to the Muslim Brotherhood, an extremist group that has been linked to terrorism.

In the video, Schiller also defended NPR’s decision to terminate its association with commentator and columnist Juan Williams over comments Williams made on Fox News last year. Williams discussed his uneasiness about flying with people wearing traditional Muslim garb. Schiller said Williams had “lost all credibility.”

[…]“What NPR did I’m very proud of,” Schiller says.[…]Another NPR fundraiser, Institutional Giving Director Betsy Liley, also attended the Feb. 22 meal where Schiller made those remarks. She appears to compare America’s treatment of Muslims in the years since 9/11 with the internment of Japanese Americans in camps during WWII.

[…]Asked to elaborate on the additional revelations he plans, O’Keefe confirmed the additional disclosures involve NPR, but would not say whether they stem from the same meeting involving Schiller and Liley.

Just yesterday NPR’s president and CEO stood before the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., and declared that the taxpayer-funded news organization exhibited no bias against conservatives. Vivian Schiller even dared conservatives to show her the proof.

Less than 24 hours later, filmmaker James O’Keefe delivered the goods.

[…]The timing was fortuitous — and it exposed Schiller as an apologist for the liberal mainstream media, of which NPR is a key player. If this is the type of talk Schiller permitted at the highest levels of NPR, is there really any question about the organization’s hostility to conservatives?

Schiller’s plea yesterday for specific examples of bias was itself laughable. The Media Research Center has a treasure trove of incidents dating back years.

“There’s no question it is a perception issue,” Schiller insisted when asked about bias in the newsroom. “It is absolutely a perception issue.”

But while she was willing to chalk up NPR’s liberal bias as merely a “perception” problem, she made sure another form of diversity was being addressed in more substantive manner.

This is the organization that FIRED Juan Williams. Juan Williams is a leftist, but not crazy enough for NPR, apparently.

The conservative activist responsible for producing an undercover video showing a National Public Radio senior executive slamming the Tea Party as “racist” and “scary” is speaking out about why he went after the organization.

And late Tuesday, NPR announced it has placed the executive, Senior Vice President for Fundraising Ron Schiller, on administrative leave.

Filmmaker James O’Keefe said the idea for the sting stemmed from an incident in October when NPR fired analyst Juan Williams after he said he got scared when people wore Muslim garb on airplanes.

“My colleague Shaughn Adeleye who posed as one of the members of the Muslim Brotherhood was pretty offended with what happened with Juan Williams and he suggested looking into NPR after that incident back in the fall,” O’Keefe said to CNN Correspondent Brian Todd on Tuesday.

“My other colleague Simon Templar came up with the idea to have a Muslim angle since Juan Williams was fired due to his comments. So we decided to see if there was a greater truth or hidden truth amongst these reporters and journalists and executives.”

I am a big fan of the Saint novels, so it’s good to see someone resurrecting the Simon Templar alias. This sting is definitely something that Simon Templar would do to expose “the ways of the ungodly”.

JO’K: Who funds it? We don’t have any money right now. We are a non-profit organization, funded by grassroots people. I’m not exaggerating. We get very small donations, we’re running on fumes. And we have volunteer filmmakers, volunteer videographers who go out there. So I would appreciate people make a donation. It’s a 501c3. We haven’t gotten our tax exemption back from the IRS yet, but hopefully we do. And it’s just an effort to muckrake, to shake things up, to expose things for what they are, and to investigate the powerful institutions that the mainstream media refuses to investigate.

HH: Did you time the release of this to coincide with the debate over whether or not to defund NPR?

JO’K: NO, that wasn’t intentional. We got this tape, you know, February 22nd, in that week, which you know, and I produced it. So frankly, it was just very coincidental, and it happens to be more of a story. You know, as a journalist, I’m glad it’s taking place now, because it’s getting a lot more exposure given the debate. But frankly, that was kind of coincidental. It was not done months and months and months ago and I waited. It was done two weeks ago, three weeks ago, and it took me some time to produce it.

HH: Is it fair in your opinion to call this a sting?

JO’K: I don’t care what you call it. Honestly, and everyone’s asking me what do I refer to myself as. It really does not matter. You can call it a sting, you can call it investigative reporting, you can call it filmmaking, you can call it activism. But what it is, is exposing that a triangle has three sides, frankly, that everyone knows that this is true. But the guy is a caricature, a stereotype, of what people have been talking about for years about these media elites. So I don’t really care what people call me or call my teammates, journalists or sting artists or activists or hoaxsters. Whatever they say, I think that it’s a form of journalism that’s been used for decades by ABC News, PrimeTime Live, 60 Minutes, To Catch A Predator. We’re just adding a new media twist to it.

HH: Where were you, the reason I asked for the term is so I can ask this question. Where were you when the sting was going down?

JO’K: I wasn’t even in D.C. I trained these two guys. I gave them all my expertise. I gave them equipment that I have. And I helped them do what they wanted to do. That’s my mission at The Project Veritas, train people, equip them, and send them out into the field to do creative reporting.

HH: Did you conceive of the idea, James?

JO’K: No, the idea was basically a hybrid between Shaughn Adeleye, who came to me and was a little bit offended by what happened with Juan Williams, and my other friend, Simon Templar, who similarly thought about doing something with NPR. And we just put our heads together, and I offered by expertise, which is the sort of undercover stuff, and they sort of did the rest.

One particularly interesting segment of the tapes is an exchange in which the NPR officials explain how their network covers controversial subjects in science. Betsy Liley is heard describing another funding source who wanted NPR not to report the views of global warming skeptics:

This funder said to us, ‘you know you would like us to support your environmental coverage, but we really don’t want to give you money if you’re going to talk to the people who think climate change is not happening,’ (as reported by the Washington Times).

She continues to say,

It is a complicated thing, though. There’s a political question and there is a scientific question and we were talking to him about supporting the science desk. And so we’ve gone back to the science editor and asked how have you planned to cover this thing? Our coverage, if you look at our coverage, you would say that science coverage has accepted that climate change is happening and we’re covering it. But in politics, our Washington desk, might actually cover it should it resurface as a political issue…this debate….

I think the challenge in our society now is that we are questioning facts. It’s not opinions we are debating. I mean, what are the facts? Is the world flat? Is that the next question we’re going to debate?

Mr. Schiller chimes in later saying,

The main point here is that it is not our responsibility to present the opinion of a non-scientist through our science desk. All educated scientists accept that climate change as fact. On the political side, however, where it is not accepted as fact, and the fact that debate is happening is news and it’s really important news. And our point of view requires that we cover that debate, if for no other reason than to have Americans understand there are still people who believe that it is not fact.

We should be stinging the secular left elites all the time. Stinging NPR, ACORN and Planned Parenthood is great for everyone – we stop funding them and then their missions (communism, voter fraud and abortion, respectively) are set back. They need our money to do the evil things they want to do. We need to cut off or limit all funding sources of NPR, PBS, unions, trial lawyers, environmentalists, ACORN and Planned Parenthood. And we need to bring in vouchers to stop all involuntary funding of public schools. Why are we work hard in private industry to pay the salaries of lazy left-wing socialists? Let them find real jobs and pay their own way in the free market. Let them offer something of value that customers want instead of acting like parasites on a host.

Almost the entire media skipped this chilling honor-killing verdict from Arizona on Tuesday, from Reuters: “An Arizona jury on Tuesday found an Iraqi immigrant guilty of second-degree murder for running down his daughter with a Jeep because she had become too Westernized.” Faleh Almaleki killed his daughter Noor in October 2009 because she spurned his arranged marriage and was living with her boyfriend. Apparently, to report this is to be “Islamophobic.”

NPR skipped Almaleki, but they noted the verdict in another horrific killing on Monday night’s All Things Considered: Aasiya Hassan was beheaded by her husband Mozzamil in 2009 as the two headed a Buffalo television project designed to create better understanding about Muslims. NPR reporter Dina Temple-Raston’s objective was to deny this crime was about Islam. Instead, she said, it was simply about domestic violence.

NPR anchor Robert Siegel tried to explain that “at the time, the media seized on the murder as an honor killing. That’s a killing allowed in some Muslim societies when shame has been brought on a family. But NPR’s Dina Temple-Raston reports from Buffalo, the Hassan case is really about domestic violence and it forced an entire community to reckon with stereotypes.”

Republicans have proposed a bill to cancel the $531 million of welfare that NPR receives each year for this “journalism”. But NPR isn’t the only leftist state-run media source.

Here’s another instance of media bias from radically leftist PBS, in which Eleanor Clift says that Scott Walker doesn’t represent the will of the people, even though he was elected after campaigning to reform union pay and benefits to fix their budget woes.

President Obama released his budget this morning. Rather than focusing on Washington’s over-spending problem, the budget calls for higher taxes on families and small businesses to pay for even more government spending. Under the Obama budget, tax revenues will grow from 14.4% of GDP in 2011 to 20% of GDP in 2021. By comparison, the historical average is only 18% of GDP.

Tax hike lowlights include:

Raising the top marginal income tax rate (at which a majority of small business profits face taxation) from 35% to 39.6%. This is a $709 billion/10 year tax hike

Raising the capital gains and dividends rate from 15% to 20%

Raising the death tax rate from 35% to 45% and lowering the death tax exemption amount from $5 million ($10 million for couples) to $3.5 million. This is a $98 billion/ten year tax hike

Capping the value of itemized deductions at the 28% bracket rate. This will effectively cut tax deductions for mortgage interest, charitable contributions, property taxes, state and local income or sales taxes, out-of-pocket medical expenses, and unreimbursed employee business expenses. A new means-tested phaseout of itemized deductions limits them even more. This is a $321 billion/ten year tax hike

New bank taxes totaling $33 billion over ten years

New international corporate tax hikes totaling $129 billion over ten years

New life insurance company taxes totaling $14 billion over ten years

Massive new taxes on energy, including LIFO repeal, Superfund, domestic energy manufacturing, and many others totaling $120 billion over ten years

Increasing unemployment payroll taxes by $15 billion over ten years

Taxing management capital gains in an investment partnership (“carried interest”) as ordinary income. This is a tax hike of $15 billion over ten years

A giveaway to the trial lawyers—not letting companies deduct the cost of punitive damages from a lawsuit settlement. This is a tax hike of $300 million over ten years

Add it all together, and this budget is a ten-year, $1.5 trillion tax hike over present law. That’s $1.5 trillion taken out of the economy and spent on government instead of being used to create jobs.

The “tax relief” in the budget is mostly just an extension of present law, and also some refundable credit outlay spending in the tax code. There is virtually no new tax relief relative to present law in the President’s budget.

So then how can the Obama administration claim that they are being fiscally responsible? Let’s see how. (H/T Hyscience)

Excerpt:

The Obama administration’s statement that the government will not be adding to the debt by the middle of the decade clashes hard against the facts, Republicans say, leaving officials straining to justify the budget claim they’ve pushed repeatedly over the past few days.

As it turns out, the administration is not counting interest payments. That means the budget team plans to have enough money to pay for ordinary spending programs by the middle of the decade. But it won’t have the money to pay off those pesky — rather, gargantuan — interest payments. So it will have to borrow some more, in turn increasing the debt and increasing the size of future interest payments year after year.

So how then, visibly agitated Republicans asked, can the administration claim that its 2012 spending plan sets the country on a course to “pay for what we spend” in just a few years?

He overlooks the fact that the government still would have to borrow to pay interest on the debt, much of it run up on his watch. Despite achieving “primary balance” in fiscal 2017, the government would have to borrow $627 billion to pay $627 billion in interest. Interest payments would rise annually through 2021.

Debt would rise as well, according to Obama’s proposed budget. Despite the budget reaching “primary balance,” the total gross government debt would rise from $21.9 trillion in fiscal 2017 to $22.9 trillion in 2018, $24 trillion in 2019, $25.2 trillion in 2020 and $26.3 trillion in 2021.

In all, the debt would jump by nearly $4.5 trillion in the four years after the government supposedly would stop adding to the debt because it had achieved “primary balance” – and that’s according to his own budget.

And a non-partisan fact-checking organization has found that Obama is lying about the budget. You can bet that the mainstream media will be backing him up, though.